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Reports: Arsenal ready to pay £45m asking price to sign Spanish star

By mac14 on June 26, 2019

According to reports in Spain via TeamTalk, Arsenal are ready to pay Real Madrid £44.6m to sign Dani Ceballos but face a battle with Tottenham to land the Spanish midfielder this summer.

Unai Emery needs to bring in a number of new signings before the start of the new Premier League campaign as we have an ageing and unbalanced squad that is lacking in quality in certain departments.

An attack-minded central midfielder is required as we’re about to lose Aaron Ramsey on a free transfer to Juventus and it appears Emery has identified Ceballos as a potential replacement for the Welshman.

The 22-year-old has struggled to establish himself since joining Real Madrid from Real Betis two years ago as he started just 13 La Liga games last season and has been informed he’s not in Zinedine Zidane’s plans.

Madrid have splashed over £250m on new players already this summer and they’re being strongly linked with Paul Pogba so Ceballos is going to find first team football even harder to come by next season.

TeamTalk are citing AS as claiming that Madrid are ready to cash-in if at least £44.6m [€50m] is put on the table and the Spanish publication says Arsenal are ready to match that figure to sign Ceballos this summer.

However, a deal won’t be easy as the report says the Spanish international is reluctant to leave the Bernabeu as he still wants to fulfill his dream of making it at Madrid while Tottenham are already in talks with the players agent.

Mauricio Pochettino has probably lined-up Ceballos as a potential replacement for Christian Eriksen but the good news is AS claim that Arsenal are the only club who’ve indicated they are willing to match Madrid’s asking price.

I think Ceballos would be an excellent signing if Arsenal could somehow pull it off as he’s a huge talent who could thrive if he’s given an important role in the first team, however, I struggle to see how we can afford him.

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Emery reportedly has around £45m to spend and we need to sign a full-back, centre-back and winger, as well as a midfielder, so if we spend our entire budget on Ceballos, the only way to afford the rest of our targets is to sell existing players.

Mesut Ozil, Shkodran Mustafi, Henrikh Mkhitaryan are assets Arsenal may be willing to sell but we’ve not found any buyers yet. I just hope we aren’t forced to cash-in on the likes of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Alexandre Lacazette or Lucas Torreira to fund our transfer business this summer.